White Hot

by Sandra Brown

  Slap laughed again. “Messy as all get out, but almost too easy. He didn’t even fight me. Oh, he put up some token resistance, but nothing that a little intimidation didn’t put a stop to, and right quick.”

  “You’re a moron for saving those clothes. Why didn’t you get rid of them?”

  “I wanted you to see what Hoyle brains and blood look like. Surprise! Ain’t no different from anybody else’s.”

  “Why did you break in on Sayre?”

  “Yeah, I thought that might yank everybody’s chain.” He winked and smacked his lips. “I’d sure like her yanking something of mine, know what I mean?”

  “Very clever, the Bible story.”

  “I thought so. Thought that up all by myself.” Then he scowled. “But you only got me to talking about that to distract me from the business at hand. Ain’t gonna happen. No sir.” Leering, he leaned in closer and said, “I get to kill my second Hoyle. Am I lucky or what?”

  • • •

  Beck was framed in the back door, watching Frito tree a squirrel, when Sayre entered the kitchen. He was wearing only a pair of cargo shorts. His back was a patchwork quilt of bruises. Moving up behind him, she slid her arms around his waist and kissed a mean purple bruise on his shoulder.

  “Good morning.”

  “Good and getting better.” He turned around and pulled her against him, kissing her lips tenderly. When they pulled apart, he took in her dishabille and smiled.

  She had put on one of his old college T-shirts, which had been laundered so many times the LSU logo was almost unreadable. “Very fetching,” he said.

  “You think so?”

  “Hm.” He rubbed his knuckles across the V of her bikini panties. Sayre reached for the fly of his shorts and began undoing the buttons. Putting their foreheads together, they laughed softly at the absurdity of their desire, which a night of lovemaking had failed to quench.

  But Frito wasn’t happy. Simultaneously they became aware of him scratching at the screened door and whining for being excluded.

  Beck looked at her and arched his eyebrow. “What do you think?”

  “I don’t think I could live with my guilty conscience.”

  “Me neither, dammit.” He released her and opened the screened door for the dog, who bounded in, grabbed one of his discarded tennis balls, and carried it over to them.

  The ball landed soggily on Sayre’s bare foot. She made a face of distaste but patted his head and thanked him for the gift.

  Beck poured each of them a cup of coffee and sat down at the kitchen table. Sayre took the chair opposite his and began idly scratching Frito behind the ears.

  “He’s got a huge crush on you,” Beck remarked.

  “He told you that?”

  “He didn’t have to. Look at his face. He’s dotty.”

  The dog was indeed looking up at her with un-abashed adoration. She took a sip of her coffee. Setting her cup down slowly, she said, “I’m going to hate myself for this later.”

  “For last night?”

  “No, I have no regrets about last night.”

  “My only regret is that it didn’t last long enough,” he said. “And that I wasted an hour of it sleeping.”

  “Barely an hour.”

  “Much too long.”

  “And even during that hour you were . . .”

  “Yes. I was,” he said huskily. “And you were so. . . snug.”

  They shared a long intimate look, then he asked what she was going to hate herself for.

  “For asking the morning-after question.”

  “The ‘where do we go from here’ question?”

  “So you’ve been asked that before?”

  “Asked, but I’ve never honored it with an answer.”

  “I’ve never asked before.”

  He hesitated, then got up and moved to the back door again. Frito picked up his tennis ball and padded over to him, hoping that it was playtime. But Beck didn’t move, only stared through the screen.

  “If you have to think about it that long, I suppose that’s answer enough.” She scraped back her chair and stood up.

  He came around quickly. “Sayre.”

  “You don’t owe me any explanation, Beck. Certainly no promises. I’m not a silly girl with stars in my eyes. Last night we responded to an emotionally charged situation, along with a mutual physical attraction. We did what we wanted to at the time, and it felt great in the dark. But it’s daylight now and—”

  “Can you doubt for one instant that I want to eat you alive?” His tone so closely bordered on anger that it took her aback and checked anything else she was about to say. “Sayre, I wanted you the minute I met you. And every time I’ve been near you since. And last night. And right now, this moment. And I’ll want you tomorrow and each day after that from now on. But—”

  “But between Huff and me, you choose Huff.”

  “It’s not that simple.”

  “Isn’t it?”

  “No.”

  “I think it is.”

  “There are things at play that you don’t know about and I can’t tell you,” he said. “I must finish what I started.”

  “Will there ever be a finish to your protecting Huff and Chris? How far will you go for them, Beck? You took a beating for them yesterday. You got spat on because of them. People scorn, mistrust, and revile you. And for their sake, you take it. Don’t you ever get tired of it?”

  His eyes speared into hers. “You have no idea.”

  “Then leave them!”

  “I can’t.”

  “What’s stopping you?”

  “I made a commitment. My life is inextricably bound to them. I don’t want it to be, especially after the night I just spent with you, but it is. It is a fact of my life.”

  His jaw was set and his mouth a stern line of resolve. The bottle-green eyes that had looked at her with such smoky desire only a few minutes ago had turned guarded and cold.

  “So it is,” she whispered. “God help you.”

  His telephone intruded with a shrill ring. She held his stare through the second ring, then he cursed softly and answered. “Hello?”

  As he listened, his expression changed like the mercurial transitions of a kaleidoscope. “When? Where?” Obviously distressed by what he was hearing, he dragged his hand down his face. “Aw, Jesus, it was fatal? He’s dead?”

  chapter 34

  By the time Beck and Sayre reached the fishing camp, he had to jockey for a parking space among squad cars and other emergency vehicles. Law officers, paramedics, and a photographer from the local newspaper were milling around in the yard between the cabin and the bank of Bayou Bosquet, talking among themselves.

  As the photographer backed up to take a shot of the cabin, he accidentally stepped on the stuffed alligator in the yard and jumped in fright, to the amusement of those around him.

  The mood was more grim inside the cabin, where the parish medical examiner was supervising the removal of Slap Watkins’s body.

  Beck and Sayre stood aside as the gurney carrying the black plastic body bag was wheeled past them toward the waiting ambulance. After the door had closed on it, they joined the group huddled around the front steps of the cabin.

  Red Harper, Wayne Scott, and Huff were there with Chris, who was seated on one of the treads. He was dressed only in a pair of slacks, his torso and feet bare and streaked with blood. He was holding a cigarette, which he had smoked halfway down.

  He glanced at Sayre, then greeted Beck with a weak smile. “Thanks for getting here so soon.”

  “Are you all right?”

  “Shaky.” He raised the hand holding the cigarette. It was trembling.

  “What happened?”

  Beck posed the question to the group at large, but Deputy Scott was the first to respond. “According to Mr. Hoyle, Watkins barged in, taunted him with the clothes he’d worn when he killed Danny in that very room, and then threatened to kill him, too.”

  Chris addressed Beck. “Th
e other night, on the road, maybe because you were with me, I wasn’t afraid of him. He was just being an asshole. But this morning, he was . . . I don’t know, psychopathic. He meant to kill me, and if I hadn’t been damn lucky he would have.”

  In a bolstering gesture, Huff squeezed Chris’s shoulder. Beck wondered if he was the only one who had noticed the pistol stuck in Huff’s belt.

  “Watkins had the clothes he was wearing when he killed Danny?” Sayre asked. “He brought them here?”

  Sheriff Harper pointed to a brown paper sack, which Beck recognized as an evidence bag that would better preserve DNA evidence. “A boot belonging to him was turned over to us earlier this morning.” He told them the circumstances. “I warned Huff that when Watkins realized we had this evidence, he would be even more dangerous to y’all. I told him to keep his guard up. We couldn’t alert Chris in time.”

  “I didn’t have my cell phone on,” Chris explained. “I got tired of media people calling me for a statement about the shutdown. I turned off my phone when I got here last night. I didn’t know to be on the lookout for Slap.”

  “How did Watkins know you were here?” Beck asked.

  “Obviously he’s been surveilling us. Driving past your house. Meeting us on the road. Breaking into Sayre’s motel room. If he was watching this place, my car would have been easy to spot.” He nodded toward the Porsche. “Maybe he came to leave those clothes just to mock us. They’re caked with . . .” He glanced at Huff and amended what he was about to say. “Who knows why he did anything? He didn’t think like a normal person. This morning he was maniacal.”

  “How did you defend yourself?”

  “The old-fashioned way. He was being a smart-aleck, propped one foot on the bed, which left his crotch vulnerable. I kicked him in the balls as hard as I could. However, I must have missed the sweet spot because it didn’t completely disable him. He fell backward but managed to hold on to his knife.

  “When I tried to get it away from him, he took a slash at me, missed, tried again, but this time I managed to catch his wrist. We fought for control of the knife. He lost, fell on the blade. I think it must’ve severed a major blood vessel in his gut because blood poured out of him. I tried to stop it, but he was dead within minutes.”

  Beck looked at Deputy Scott. “Clearly it was self-defense.”

  “Sure looks like that.” He offered his hand down to Chris. “I owe you an apology, Mr. Hoyle, for all the inconvenience and embarrassment I’ve caused you. Mostly I’m sorry I suspected you in the first place.”

  Chris shook his hand. “You were only doing your job. We Hoyles need a man like you to protect our town, right, Huff?”

  “Right.”

  Blushing over their approval, the deputy retrieved the evidence bag. “I’ll get this back to the office and log it,” he said to Red. “If you’d like, I can drive it to New Orleans.”

  “Thanks. Soon as I get back to the office, I’ll type up a statement for Chris to sign.”

  The deputy touched the brim of his hat and nodded at Sayre. “Ma’am.” He left, taking the evidence bag with him.

  Chris inhaled deeply on the cigarette one final time, then ground it out on the step. “I’ll be glad to put all this behind me. Being a suspect in a murder case is no party. It’s also distracted me from the plant and the mess we’ve got there.” He shot a dirty look toward Sayre but didn’t address her participation in the events leading up to the shutdown.

  The ambulance bearing the body had already departed. Gradually others began to leave. Red Harper was the last to drive away. “He looks worse than Slap,” Chris remarked of the sheriff.

  “He’s got cancer.”

  Shocked, they all turned toward Huff.

  “Bad?” Chris asked.

  “Let’s just say it’s a good thing we now have Wayne Scott playing on our team.”

  “He hasn’t signed a letter of intent yet,” Chris said.

  “Contrition can make a man agreeable. I think now would be an ideal time for you to send him a thank-you note with a little gift inside.”

  Chris returned Huff’s conspiratorial grin. “First thing tomorrow.”

  “I’m going down to the water,” Sayre said stiffly. “Call me when you’re ready to leave, Beck.”

  Chris, looking amused, watched her stalk away. “I think we’ve offended Sayre. Or is she just pissed off that she was so wrong about me?”

  Beck didn’t have an answer for him, and Huff was only half listening. He was appraising the facade of the ramshackle cabin. “I should sell this camp.”

  “I was thinking along those same lines this morning, even before Slap arrived,” Chris said. “None of us will want to come out here after this.”

  “Handle the sale, will you, Beck?” Huff said. “I don’t want anything more to do with this place.”

  “I’ll take care of it.” Beck motioned at the pistol. “What did you intend to do with that?”

  “I couldn’t reach Chris to warn him about Watkins. Panicked a little, I guess. But as it turns out, with good reason. When I got here, saw all those squad cars that had converged on the place, I suffered several minutes of pure hell, thinking I was too late.” Again he clamped his hand on Chris’s shoulder. “When I think of what could have happened . . .”

  “Now, Huff,” Chris chided. “Don’t go soft on us.”

  “And put the pistol away before you hurt somebody or shoot off your own manhood.”

  Huff laughed. “Will do, Beck.” He motioned toward the road behind the cabin. “I had to park down the road a piece. I’m on my way to the plant. We need to talk about how we’re going to handle these OSHA inspectors.”

  “Handle them?” Beck said.

  Huff winked at him. “They might be more obliging if we threw them a bone in the form of somebody expendable.”

  “I’m way ahead of you, Huff,” Chris said. He told them about the bargain he’d struck with Lila. “As it turns out, we don’t need her to clear me. But that’s not to say that George won’t come in handy as a fall guy.”

  “Okay then, that’s the plan,” Huff said. “Y’all coming?”

  Chris looked down at the blood spatters on his chest and frowned with disgust. “I’ll be along as soon as I wash off.”

  “I’ll stay here with Chris until he leaves,” Beck said.

  Huff raised his hand in a wave, then disappeared around the corner of the cabin.

  Chris went inside only long enough to retrieve his shirt and shoes. “I put my clothes in the closet when I undressed last night,” he told Beck when he came out. “Good thing, too. It looks like a slaughterhouse and smells like a meat market in there.”

  Beck followed Chris down to the edge of the fishing pier, where there was a water faucet and several yards of rubber hose they used when they cleaned fish. A porcelain basin and several bars of soap were also left there for washing up afterward.

  Sayre turned at the hollow sound of their footfalls on the pier. Chris said to her, “Unless you want your eyes opened to what a real man looks like, you’d better turn your back because I’m about to strip.”

  “You’re in an awfully chipper mood for someone who just knifed a man to death.”

  “Would you have rather he knifed me? No, don’t answer. It might hurt my feelings.”

  “How can you be so blasé, Chris? Does nothing affect you?”

  He thought about it for a moment, then gave an indolent shrug. “Not much, no.”

  She looked at him with disgust. “You’re a bastard, Chris. You always have been.”

  “No, what I am is Huff Hoyle’s favored firstborn son. And always have been. And always will be. And that’s always stuck in your craw.”

  “I’m sure it stokes your colossal ego to think that, but you couldn’t be more wrong.”

  Beck, seeing that nothing would be gained by this brewing quarrel, played the diplomat and stepped between them. “Take my pickup,” he told Sayre. “I’m going to the plant for a meeting with Chris and
Huff, but I’ll catch up with you later. Where will you be?”

  When she looked at him, he realized that even though Chris’s phone call had interrupted the discussion about the future of their relationship, the discussion was in fact over. In her eyes he saw disillusionment. Disappointment, perhaps. Disdain, certainly. “I’ll be in San Francisco.”

  She sidestepped him and walked briskly up the pier. Beck watched her climb into his pickup, execute a three-point turn, then drive away without another glance in his direction. Staying behind and watching her leave was the most difficult thing he’d ever had to do.

  He wanted to run after her, but even if she stopped, which he was certain she wouldn’t, what would he say that hadn’t already been said?

  “Well, that was certainly . . . ah, poignant,” Chris said, tongue in cheek. “If you need to take a moment to collect yourself—”

  “Shut up, Chris.”

  Snuffling a laugh, he took off his trousers. His boxer shorts, Beck noted, were saturated with blood. After removing them, Chris turned on the faucet and washed vigorously with a bar of soap, even his hair.

  When he finished, he sluiced water off his skin and shook it out of his hair, then dressed, leaving his undershorts behind. Together they walked to his car and headed for the foundry. They were almost there when Chris noticed Beck tentatively dabbing the cut on his cheekbone.

  “It could have been worse,” Chris remarked. “Think about Clark Daly.”

  “I have,” Beck said somberly.

  Entering the plant, now silent and empty except for the security guards, was a surreal experience. They went up to the executive offices. All were empty, even Huff’s.

  “He must have stopped somewhere along the way,” Chris said. “But let’s wait for him in here. I need a drink. Want one?”

  “It’s ten o’clock in the morning.”

  “But it’s been that kind of morning.”

  While Chris was pouring his drink, Beck moved to the window and looked out over the shop floor. The OSHA inspection would begin on Monday. For now, the place was deserted. It was still dark, still dirty, still hot even though the furnaces had been turned off.